From breast to bottle 🤷🏽♀️
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Hi! You can transition baby to the bottle for when you’re at work, but still nurse her at night or when you’re home if you want. My son was 5 months when I went back to work and we did bottle during the day and breast during the evening and early morning; this helped ease the transition for the both of us. Good luck, mama! You got this! 💕
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Good luck, mama!
Give baby the bottle now...I do breast milk bottle feeding at night and sometimes during the day but breastfeed them both! It works
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How old was your baby when you started the transition? My baby is 3 weeks but I feel we have our schedule down and have effective feedings.
I started out from birth alternating breast and bottle. Also, I had no choice the first 24 hours because I had to be rushed back for emergency DNC and blood transfusion, but she takes both. Sometimes she fights the boob, but it just takes a little more patients and she eventually latches. 😁 Hope this helps!
I would def recommend investing in more pump parts! I have 3 pair and I’m still washing constantly. My first 3 days at work she fought the bottle until she was starving but eventually she figured it out. Even now she won’t take a bottle if I’m in the house.🙄 When I work, it’s usually a feed in early AM, pump before work, pump at lunch, feed on demand when I get home until she goes to bed, and a pump right before I go to bed around 10:30. It’s worked out that I can maintain my supply but also have enough for her to eat and even sometimes some to freeze. We use a lansinoh slow flow bottle recommended by my lactation consultant, it’s similar in shape and flow so her latch doesn’t change. Hope this helps!
I would suggest you start a bottle here and there just to test it out. That and to figure out what bottles and bottle nipples your little one likes. I went through 12 different bottles/nipples until my daughter finally was okay with a bottle. Also, one thing I’m so grateful for that another mama advised me for being a breastfeeding mama was to try a preemie nipple flow/level 0 instead of the 0-3 months or level 1. My daughter likes the joovy boob bottle with the level 0/preemie flow. I was stressing out because she would not take bottles, not even when I wasn’t around and I was a week away from going back to work. Now we’re good 🤗 good luck!
Try to have another family member give your baby the bottle when you’re not around. Or you can give your baby a bottle every couple of days.. it doesn’t have to be an everyday thing. Also, my little guy hates EVERY SINGLE bottle I tried.. I saw an online ad for the minbie bottles, and that actually worked really well too. I actually go back to work next week, so I understand exactly what you’re going through right now trying to find a way for your little one to take a bottle...
If you are going to breast feed at night practice paced bottle feeding which you can see videos of on YouTube
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I will have to look that up.. thanks
On my lactation consultant's advice, I introduced a bottle around four weeks and had someone else give my baby one 1x a day. When I went back to work when my baby was 12 weeks, going back and forth was no problem!
Thanks everyone!! I gave baby girl a bath and gave my husband a bottle to fed her afterwards. She took it right away with no problem 🙌🏽🙌🏽 I am 3 weeks away from going back to work, so this makes me soooo happy to know she will be okay without mama. Now I’ll just get my pumping schedule down 😊
Start now! If she has a problem taking bottle when you're around use a nipple shield
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We’ve been having a really hard time! She used to gulp down bottles like a champ but now that I’ve gone back to work she refuses to eat from a bottle. A nipple shield sounds like a great idea to try to transition her back to liking bottles again.
No don't wing her just every other feed go from breast to bottle pump in between and keep a pump with you at work by law you do have a right to take breaks to pump if brest feeding
I didn't start a bottle until 6 week back at work at 8 weeks. I used playtex disposable bottles with rhe breastfeeding nipples. He mived to them fine. I continued to breastfeed in the morning and night. Now at 14 months i breastfeed at night and afternoon and no longer pump at all. My supply would dip if i didn't continue to breastfeed and only pump.
I used the Avent bottles for my little earthling. I had his daddy try the bottle once a day for a week and eventually he got the hang of it. We did it at night after he had already nursed so he was grumpy or hungry but instead just to get the feel of it. I would recommend if you are planning to still nurse, not doing the bottle yourself because I feared they would become confused since you are also the boob, if that makes sense!!! It does take time and it took us three different nipple styles to find the one he liked!
I used the Avent bottles for my little earthling. I had his daddy try the bottle once a day for a week and eventually he got the hang of it. We did it at night after he had already nursed so he was grumpy or hungry but instead just to get the feel of it. I would recommend if you are planning to still nurse, not doing the bottle yourself because I feared they would become confused since you are also the boob, if that makes sense!!! It does take time and it took us three different nipple styles to find the one he liked!
I started practicing 1 month out. Nuk and Medela were the brands that I used. Try in the morning when they are hungriest
I strictly breast feed for 4 months and when I went back to college my baby would hunger strike the whole time I was gone (5hrs twice a week). She never learned and we breastfed for 2 years (working 20 hrs a week). I had to force wean her to a sippy cup.
All of my babies preferred different bottles, so it was trial and error to find one they liked. I go back to work 11/26 so we are trying a bottle now and then with my newest little. With the others, they adamantly refused bottles when I was around. I breastfed both of them for over a year, they only took bottles when I was at work, so that was when I'd pump.
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Try introducing bottle at night. I find it helps my baby sleep longer. Playtex nurser bottles with drop ins are a life saver the slow flow nipple replicates the flow of milk from your breast and you can push all of the air out of the bottle to combat gas. My little one takes breast and bottle when I use these so no need to wean unless you don't want to breastfeed at home
Thanks so much! She has taken a bottle a few times while in the car or once during an exhausting cluster feed session when I was just tired. But I felt like she would do better with me not around. Ill quit stressing and start scheduling some short times away and leave BM bottles with husband to see how she does with me gone; and get a quick break!!